Moped mad: Eamon Maloney (above)
with his collection of sports bikes and
(below) a Yamaha poster
showing the FS1 DX

Twist 'n' go

Power wasn't their best feature but sports mopeds had Seventies
style in abundance, says Simon de Burton

THEY struggled up hills produced more noise than
horsepower but back in the Seventies, owning a sports moped meant more
to your hip biking 16-year old than Starsky and Hutch, Suzi Quatro and
flared jeans rolled into one.

Two-wheeled heaven was a Yamaha FS1-E - known as the "Fizzie" - the
less racy-looking Suzuki AP5O, or Honda's solid and reliable SS.
Others, me included, spent their spare time in the garage repairing
highly-strung, "exotic" machines, made by Italian firms such as Fantic
and Garelli.

Outlandish top speeds were claimed, but 50mph was about it.

If you came anywhere near 70mph, you were probably on a Fantic where
the speedo needle was probably measuring vibrations per second rather
than forward motion.

In 1973, the government decreed, in order to reduce accidents, that
16-year-olds should ride nothing bigger than a moped. As far as
the Ministry of Transport was concerned, a moped was something with a
50cc engine and pedals - something slow and unattractive to youngsters
like a Raleigh Runabout or a Puch Maxi.

So the clever bike makers fitted pedals to tiny 50cc "performance"
motorcycles. Inevitably there was an outcry and, in 1978, it
became illegal to sell a new moped that would do more than 30mph.
Soon most of the surviving sports mopeds had been thrashed to death,
and were largely forgotten.

Except by members of the Sports Moped Owners Club (SMOC), who are
dedicated to preserving these two-wheeled period pieces.

Devotees include Eamon Maloney a 40-year-old south London civil
servant and owner of what is probably the finest Fizzie in
Britain - it cost £4,500 to restore. Finished in
classic Yamaha yellow, Maloney also has a mint condition example in
purple and an equally superb Suzuki AP50.

"These bikes represent an era which means a great deal to so many
people of my generation," says Maloney. "After 1985, no one
wanted sports mopeds, but about five years ago, people of my age who
were established in their careers and bad a bit of spare cash, started
buying them again: it's what you might call 'Men Behaving Sadly' I
suppose."

"My Fizzies remind me of the time I worked in an off-licence.
I was 16 and saving up for one. It cost £235 new in 1976
but I bought a secondhand one for £145, and then had to find
another £30 for the insurance."

"Just hearing a Fizzie now immediately takes me back 20 years and
lots of other people feel the same: whenever I take one out, every 35
to 45-year-old male wants to stop and talk to me about it."

What to pay

Expect to pay a minimum of £250 for a running Japanese or
Italian sports moped such as a Suzuki AP50, Yamaha FS1-E or Fantic GT4,
with prices rising to £2,000-plus for the best restored
examples.

It is still legal for a 16-year-old with a provisional motorcycle
licence with a CBT to ride a pre-September 1978 unrestricted sports
moped.

Sports mopeds have become increasingly hard to find and values have
risen dramatically. Fizzies are probably the most readily
available and there are plenty of spares, although new parts are
expensive.

Much rarer are some of the European models, such as the Garelli
Tiger Cross trail bike, the French Gitane race replicas or, perhaps the
most outlandish of all, the Fantic 50 Chopper.